Dear Diary: Robots, late nights and lots of learning. The pandemic isn't slowing down this student

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In this instalment of our series, Deary Diary: In a Time of COVID-19, Isabella Lopez Rivadeneira tells us about coding and building robots during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This entry has been edited for clarity and length.

My name is Isabella L.R, and this is my fourth year on the Maplebots robotics team. We are based in Calgary, Canada, and I have to say, they've been the best four years of my life.

Being a 12-year-old, a few days ago we competed in the Robotics Peopleonline competition. With the COVID-19 crisis, a competition didn't seem like the best thing to do. Robotics People put one on, though, very strategically.

They put on an onlinecompetition in which we participated in the section called Mini Sumofor the very first time. I've participated in A-Mazingand Line Following,even Fire Fighting, but Mini Sumois new to me. New to all of us at Maplebots.

Traditionally, in sumo, two bots go head-to-head in a fight to push the other one out of the dojo, but since we all need social distance, Robotics People played with the challenge a bit.

In Mini Sumo, your robot has to push 16 cups out of a circular dojo. That's quite a clever thingsince there can't be two robots. Being new to the challenge, we took it on. That's how my brother and I kept ourselves busy, coding and building our robot.

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Since it was a new challenge, we used a familiar robot. Edison is a robot from Australia that uses the platforms Edblocks, EdPython and Edscratch.

I have to say, it was a new and difficult experience, many all-nighters and failures. But when competition day came, we were ready. We had three rounds, and the less time your robot spent getting the cups out, the more points you had.

The team with fastest times won.

Mini Sumo Challenge

4 years ago

Duration 0:30

Isabella Lopez Rivadeneira, her brother Isaac and their robot Edison show off their skills in this "Mini Sumo" robotics challenge.

All those nights awake were worth it when in one of our rounds we did it in 22 seconds. That was the best score. We won!

Edison was fast enough to push all 16 cups out ofa 79-centimeter dojoin 22 seconds. It really was a pleasure to get our first win on Robotics People, plus my first time doing it online.

Now my goal is to be better. We're still getting better, you see, but it's a lot of fun, especially with new challenges. We're not done competing, though. No matter if COVID-19 stops us from doing so in person, we'll still compete.

So, Dear Diary, expect to hear more of us!

Read all of our past Dear Diary entries here.

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